African countries need to move forward on financing to improve their performance on the Sustainable Development Goals and Africa’s transformation Agenda 2063. This is according to panelists at a session to highlight progress made at regional and sub regional levels in the implementation of Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The session was held at the opening of the Eighth session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD 2022) on 3 March in Kigali, Rwanda.
Bartholomew Armah, Acting Director of Macroeconomics and Governance at the ECA, who presented the 2020 Sustainable Development Report (SDR) report findings at the session said domestic resource mobilization needs to be improved, as the share of domestic debt to GDP has increased.
“The reliance on raising resources from outside the continent results in higher debt servicing costs due to a high “African premium” – compared to other regions.The special drawing rights (SDR) amounting to 650 billion recently approved by the IMF provides an important source of non-debt resources because the cost of using SDRs is relatively low,” he said.